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Chautauqua 2017: Lessons Learned

As pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed in my Chau­tauqua recap post, I had a real­ly amaz­ing time hang­ing out with new and old friends, tak­ing in the beau­ti­ful scenery, and learn­ing some pret­ty inter­est­ing things. I cov­ered the friends and scenery in the last post, so.….… time to talk about the lessons I learned!

Lesson 1

Our host Cheryl gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on hap­pi­ness and find­ing your pur­pose in life. This was use­ful to me even though my base­line hap­pi­ness lev­el is high. I’m going through pret­ty big changes in my life and have a lot of things going on, so it was help­ful for me to sit down and actu­al­ly talk out what in my life I want to pri­or­i­tize. It turns out I get the most val­ue out of life when a few things are hap­pen­ing.

1: Pri­or­i­tiz­ing my rela­tion­ship with my boyfriend. Our rela­tion­ship is going real­ly well and I’d like to think it has some­thing to do with the fact both of us are mak­ing it a pri­or­i­ty in our lives. I can’t expect some­thing so impor­tant to me to just auto­mat­i­cal­ly go well, so that means I need to devote time and ener­gy to ensur­ing we con­tin­ue to build a sol­id and trust­wor­thy foun­da­tion for our rela­tion­ship.

2: I’m hap­py when cre­at­ing things. This involves activ­i­ties like quilt­ing, stained glass, writ­ing these blog posts, and record­ing pod­cast episodes. I like cre­at­ing things that help oth­er peo­ple in their life, are pret­ty, or are use­ful to oth­ers. This also includes doing activ­i­ties with my time like giv­ing pre­sen­ta­tions and giv­ing back to oth­ers through finan­cial lit­er­a­cy pro­grams.

3: Being challenged/learning. Learn­ing new skills and new infor­ma­tion is impor­tant to my hap­pi­ness. There is a big world out there full of things to learn. It doesn’t mat­ter if I’m learn­ing new things about myself, or learn­ing new things about the world we live in. I have a thirst for knowl­edge and when I’m not sati­at­ing that I get unhap­py.

4: I need to be hav­ing fun. Life is too short to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. If you can’t make things fun, why do them? Laun­dry can be made into a game. Doing the dish­es can be fun (hint: use lots of soap to cre­ate BUBBLES!). It’s all about mind­set and I learned I need to seek out the fun in the most mun­dane of activ­i­ties.

Lesson 2

Jim Collins gave a great chat on every­thing invest­ing. A real­ly inter­est­ing take­away I got is the dif­fer­ence between active ver­sus pas­sive invest­ing and which is the best route for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. I’ve been per­fect­ly con­tent to pas­sive­ly invest my mon­ey in the mar­ket. Unlike many oth­ers, I don’t real­ly have a burn­ing desire to active­ly man­age my funds which is good because my invest­ing ben­e­fits from me keep­ing my grub­by paws out of it. How­ev­er, if you want to active­ly invest in some­thing, real estate is an excel­lent choice that requires a hands-on approach (at least at the begin­ning, as I can attest). I’m get­ting use out of being involved in the real estate activ­i­ties so I should keep doing so, and keep stay­ing out of my invest­ments.

Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, there were no cows in his pre­sen­ta­tion. I was sad.

Lesson 3

I had a one-on-one with Paula that cov­ered all sorts of top­ics, to include but not lim­it­ed to real estate strate­gies, pod­cast cre­at­ing, blog­ging, and trav­el­ing. From her I learned how to reverse pitch unso­licit­ed emails for spon­sored blog posts into pitch­es for spon­sor­ing an episode of Fire Drill pod­cast. [you know, my awe­some new pod­cast that’s super fun and inter­est­ing that you should be lis­ten­ing to ;)] I also learned I should keep my house no mat­ter how big of a pain it is because I got a good deal and it’s in a neigh­bor­hood that is already start­ing to expe­ri­ence some appre­ci­a­tion and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

Lesson 4

Relat­ed­ly, I had an amaz­ing chat with Coach Car­son about real estate. Between him and Paula, I feel com­fort­able not only keep­ing my house but also buy­ing more prop­er­ties in the future. I was specif­i­cal­ly con­cerned about what the loss of W2 income would have on my abil­i­ty to buy more prop­er­ties, but both of them assured me it wouldn’t be an issue.

Good thing for me I have a W2 job so I don’t have to wor­ry about it!

.….…..or do I?

Lesson 5

My num­ber one rea­son to go to the Chau­tauqua this year was to see if I was in a good spot to quit my job and start liv­ing the FI lifestyle.

The answer was an unequiv­o­cal YES.

Ok, so Bran­don didn’t go all crazy like Gwen Ste­fani (even though that’s some­thing I’d very much like to see!) but he was absolute­ly pos­i­tive I should quit my job.

So.… I’m going to quit my job! I can’t believe how many times I’m say­ing that ha! The new­ness of that phrase means it will be quite some time before I get tired of it.

The time frame for doing so looks to be some­time Spring 2018. I need to save up enough mon­ey to do some repairs to my cur­rent prop­er­ty before I quit. I’d also like to have a decent cash cush­ion.

I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have alter­na­tive forms of income start­ed. I’ll have rental income, artis­tic endeav­ors, speak­ing gigs, and pos­si­bly some free­lanc­ing mon­ey com­ing in. I’m not say­ing they’re super robust, aka nowhere enough to replace my cur­rent income, but since I have super low expens­es I should be ok.

One rea­son I will have super low expens­es (and a major rea­son I want to quit my job so soon) is I will be mov­ing in with my boyfriend who cur­rent­ly lives 5 hours away. When I move in, we’ll fig­ure out a way to split expens­es in a way that works for both of us. I quite like spend­ing time with him (see les­son #1) and the win­ter will make that dif­fi­cult. It’s already start­ed to snow there, so our plans will need to be flex­i­ble to accom­mo­date the unpre­dictable weath­er. It’d be amaz­ing to not have to wor­ry about that!

Wait­ing until the spring means I’ll have enough time to take advan­tage of all my med­ical ben­e­fits before I quit and lose my health insur­ance. I’m not sure what I’m going to do for health insur­ance after I quit so stay tuned as I look into that.

Quit­ting my job (!!!!) also means my offi­cial FI plans have changed. I’m no longer going to be work­ing towards a set num­ber. Instead, I’m just going to live life and do things that inter­est me. Most of those things will earn mon­ey. Even now I’ve dis­cov­ered peo­ple are com­ing to me with endeav­ors that will earn me mon­ey when I’m not even look­ing for it. Pret­ty sweet!

I’m excit­ed to see where the next few months take me! I’m equal­ly thrilled I get to share the jour­ney with you, my read­ers. Buck­le up — it’s going to be a fun ride!

Any advice for me? Ques­tions I didn’t answer? Any plans to take an FI-relat­ed trip?

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Comments

Wow — good for you, Gwen! One thing you may want to watch out for is the cost of beer when you move up north… There are so many good brew­eries com­pared to where you are now. So, make sure you save a lit­tle extra for that 🙂

Omg you’re going through with it! You had a huge grin on your face when you said you were con­sid­er­ing it — very excit­ing to hear that it’s hap­pen­ing. Good luck — you’ll obvi­ous­ly be just fine (espe­cial­ly once every­body real­izes how awe­some FIRE Drill is and you start mak­ing $1B/year off that).

You’re tak­ing awe­some steps toward build­ing the life you want to retire to! Con­grat­u­la­tions on quit­ting your job and doing what makes you hap­py. You have been a great evan­ge­list for the impact the FIRE com­mu­ni­ty can have, and I look for­ward to meet­ing you and oth­ers at Fin­Con or Chau­tauqua some­time in the future!

Con­grats on the plan! I’ll play devil’s advo­cate, since that’s what I love to do. Plus I’m ultra con­ser­v­a­tive in my plan­ning so these are things I would be think­ing about if I were in your shoes.

1) Have a back­up plan if liv­ing with your BF doesn’t work. Noth­ing per­son­al, but shit hap­pens. 2) It seems like your rental has been in the red since you’ve bought it. When do you think you’ll be in the black? Due to its age do you think you’ll be able to get recur­ring cash inflows from that invest­ment? Would hir­ing a prop­er­ty man­ag­er be a good option or take too much of the prof­it? 3) How much cash do you plan to have on hand when you quit?

Hey Gwen, I can total­ly relate. A month ago, I decid­ed to quit my w2 in 15 months (Jan 2019). It’s just like you said, I’m not wait­ing for FI. Gonna live life soon­er and make it work. I’ll need to work up some bet­ter income, but there’s time, and we live on very lit­tle. Can’t wait to hear more.

Woot! Go Gwen! It was great to meet you in Ecuador and I’m glad you’re seri­ous­ly plan­ning to pull the trig­ger, quit the job, and move in with the SigO… you were at a cross­road and it sounds like recent expe­ri­ences have helped solid­i­fy your deci­sions. I look for­ward to hear­ing it all play out. Cheers! Wendy (the oth­er gwenith)

Wow! Con­grat­u­la­tions! All that sounds very excit­ing. I agree that you have to pri­or­i­tize rela­tion­ships. When we first start­ed dat­ing, my hus­band moved across the coun­try to be with me. Best of luck to you and your boyfriend!

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, you are a rock­star and com­plete­ly killing it at life right now. So thank­ful we had the chance to hang out again in Dal­las, I reck­on I might start going through Gwen with­drawals since who knows when I will see you again. Wait, you asked about FI trips? Come to LA then we can hang out again and we need to plan Vegas too. Miss you already!

Aw shucks. Miss you too! LA is warm in the win­ter.… right? Might have to escape the wrath of win­ter some­time and see you guys. We def­i­nite­ly need to coör­di­nate Vegas.… got­ta get in there before all the tick­ets are gone!!! Ha!

Wow, con­grat­u­la­tions on reach­ing the point where you can quit full-time work! Since you’re mov­ing so far away, are you going to han­dle a prop­er­ty man­age­ment com­pa­ny or some­thing else for your rental?

Awe­some about you leav­ing your job in the spring! I’ve recent­ly been try­ing to jus­ti­fy doing what you are going to be doing, but I don’t have the pas­sive (Real Estate) income com­ing in reg­u­lar­ly the same way you will. One day soon I will join you in “retire­ment”, but until then, I’ll be read­ing your sto­ries with a lit­tle bit of envy 🙂

Real­ly excit­ing you’ve got a plan to hang it up way ear­li­er than you’d orig­i­nal­ly thought pos­si­ble. You should let Tyson know to put an “over­ride” fea­ture into OnTra­jec­to­ry for deci­sions like this. And yes, keep the house! We’ll have to trade land­lord tips at a meet up.

Con­grats on the major life deci­sion! I With your amaz­ing­ly low spend­ing + rental income I have no doubt you’ll find some­thing excit­ing to work on/towards (well, in addi­tion to all the cool things you’re already work­ing on).

Con­grats! That is such excit­ing news. It’s amaz­ing how much in your life has changed since I start­ed fol­low­ing your blog.

After I quit the first time, I quick­ly dis­cov­ered solo long term trav­el just wasn’t my thing and I was real­ly lost in what I was sup­posed to be doing with my life. I end­ed up find­ing anoth­er job because I was bored and fig­ured I might as well work, but the job end­ed up being such an impact on my time and life ener­gies, that I end­ed up quit­ting that job too. I’m not real­ly sure what I’m going to do next. I’m find­ing myself mov­ing more towards Ms. Montana’s idea of real­ly con­sid­er­ing what is a nec­es­sary expense in life. I default­ed to the choice of work­ing so that I have ample mon­ey to do the things that I “REALLY” want to do and for opti­mal finan­cial safe­ty, but the per­fect­ly rea­son­able oth­er choice is that I can choose not to work if I can be con­tent with a sus­tain­able lifestyle — I just need to fig­ure out what that looks like and then bridge the gap with some way of earn­ing extra $$$ if need be.

When you said “peo­ple are com­ing to me with endeav­ors that will earn me mon­ey when I’m not even look­ing for it.” — is there a trend you’ve noticed that explains how these things seem to hap­pen?

I think where you’ve end­ed up is cer­tain­ly what I wish would hap­pen — that the $$$ can just hap­pen for things that hap­pen to sound inter­est­ing and I don’t need to make this huge effort of sell­ing myself in pur­suit of earn­ing $$.

At the risk of sound­ing like a heretic I am not sure I fol­low the deci­sion to RE with cur­rent assets and income.

I’m curi­ous which prob­a­ble chal­lenges you went through from Retir­ing ear­ly and the answers to each of those chal­lenges you came up with. (that is all prob­lem solv­ing is right?)

My ques­tion is not to chal­lenge your con­clu­sion, it is to help oth­er read­ers fol­low the thought process so they might have the same look at their own sit­u­a­tions.FIRE is so much more than just the stan­dard 4% rule that is often stat­ed so it would be good to see which route you chose to get to FIRE.

SOINSPIRINGGIRRRRL! Your post is mak­ing me even more excit­ed to check out the FIRE con­fer­ences in the next year or so, I’m on year 2 of my “FI plan”… I love know­ing there’s a com­mu­ni­ty out­side of just me and my SO doing this in wis­con­sin!

P.S. “go all crazy like Gwen Ste­fani” and then see­ing a pic­ture of Christi­na A… AREYOUTRYINGTOTHROWMEOFF?! Haha

I just saw this post recent­ly. Thanks for the shout out about our chat at Chau­tauqua. You’re awe­some and are going to do very well with how­ev­er the next steps play out. Can’t wait to fol­low along!